Judge Richard A. Posner on Our Media (NY Times Books, 7/31/05)

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/posner-r-cnbc.html

http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/posner-r/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Posner

[Richard A. Posner (see links above) is a 'pragmatist' in his judicial dispositions and were we to have serious intellectuals appointed to the Supreme Court, would have been one high on the list rather than our current earnest managing editor of the Harvard Law Review who will most likely be a bit lost at being asked to decide the law of the land all on his own. Posner (I have heard in person once) is nobody's man. His diversion here into reflection on our media is thought provoking, if not definitive -- worth a read as most of his stuff is. Ed Kent}

........................................................................

By RICHARD A. POSNER

The conventional news media are embattled. Attacked by both
left and right in book after book, rocked by scandals,
challenged by upstart bloggers, they have become a focus of
controversy and concern. Their audience is in decline, their
credibility with the public in shreds.

The current tendency to political polarization in news
reporting is a consequence of changes not in underlying
political opinions but in costs, specifically the falling
costs of new entrants. Being profit-driven, the media respond
to the actual demands of their audience rather than to the
idealized "thirst for knowledge" demand posited by public
intellectuals and deans of journalism schools. The public's
interest in factual accuracy is less an interest in truth
than a delight in the unmasking of the opposition's errors.
The limited consumer interest in the truth is the key to
understanding why both left and right can plausibly denounce
the same media for being biased in favor of the other.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/31/books/review/31POSNER.html?8bu&emc=bu

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